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Blizzard faces severe backlash after Diablo Immortal reveal

Blizzard had their annual BlizzCon over the weekend, on November 2 and November 3. While they had plenty to showcase, including a new Overwatch cinematic, “Reunion“, and a Warcraft III remaster on the way, Warcraft III: Reforged (both of which are lookin really good), the thing that garnered most attention was Diablo Immortal. But it was for all the wrong reasons.

Blizzard is facing major backlash after the Diablo Immortal reveal, with fans calling it a “slap in the face”. Many fans purchased tickets expecting to see a teaser or reveal for the next Diablo game, i.e., Diablo 4. This was because Blizzard had teased in August that it was working on “multiple Diablo projects”. So it wasn’t surprising that fans were hyped for something big. What they got instead was a mobile game, which many are saying, is just a reskinned version of an existing Chinese game.

The game’s trailer has since been removed and re-uploaded to YouTube, several times apparently, to reset the likes and dislikes, which at one point crossed 200k dislikes. It was sitting at 150k dislikes at the time of writing of this. Another instance people noticed of Blizzard censoring hate was the removal of a top comment several times, eight reportedly, which went, “‘No King Rules Forever My Son.’ I have played your games for the last 20+ years and will never forget my first encounter with Thrall… Goodbye. You have changed old friend.”

There was an awkward silence following the reveal at BlizzCon, following which during the Q&A, a fan asked Blizzard if this was “an out of season April Fools’ joke”, which has now attained meme status.

Crusaders of Light, a game developed by NetEase, the developers who are working with Blizzard on Diablo Immortal, has many similarities with the new Diablo game, and many fans are calling the new Diablo a reskin of Crusaders of Light. However, Blizzard have said that Diablo Immortal is not a reskin and has been built from the ground up.

SKOAR! is India's Premier Gaming Website. SKOAR! began its journey as a bi-monthly publication in 2003 and has since kept growing. Through this journey, it has evolved from a purely print magazine to an interactive magazine and now, has made its foray into the digital space. BTW, why on earth are you reading this part? Ran out of articles to read? Weren't we entertaining enough? Maybe you're just bored, so you might as well go pester the editor or troll someone in the comments ;-)